HOW NOT TO REALLY BE A HERO a newly made biography of James West
by Kierielle
Summary: A biography/back story for James Kiernan Templeton West, famous agent provocateur, political consultant, statesman, veteran's rights activist, and breeder of Wellara, Moraba, Pintabian, Arabian, and Rocky Mountain horses and Welsh ponies in post Civil War era US.


HOW NOT TO BE A HERO, EXCEPT TO EVERYONE ELSE.

A REMADE BIOGRAPHY OF JAMES KIERNAN TEMPLETON WEST

BY RONI GABRIELLE CIARANN BAER SACKSTEDER

Jim's immediate family

Mother:

Geraldine Fitzgerald

as Eireann Nessa 'Nessa' Roisin Templeton West

Father:

Gregory Peck

as Deiniol Mihangel Glyndwr "Daniel" West, MD

Namesake Uncle:

Frederic March as

James Kiernan 'Jaimey' Templeton, Col. Retd USA

Aunt [namesake uncle's wife]:

Olivia Dehaviland as

Betrys Morwen Gwyneth 'Queen Bea' Parry Templeton

And more other important figure:

Jean Simmons as:

Her Serene Highness, Zara Timandra Alys Iliana, the Dowager-Princess-Royal-Grand Electress of Wallachia.

At Jefferson Barracks Missouri, the oldest military post in the western territories, on July 2cnd, 1842, a son was born to Deiniol Mihangel Glyndwr West, MD, and Eireann Nessa Roisin Templeton West. This infant boy would be named for his maternal uncle, Colonel James Kiernan 'Jaimey' Templeton, originally of Glasgow, and so would come to be known as James Kiernan Templeton West. James or as he would be called by his extended family, 'Kiery', was late in arriving, nineteen minutes after his twin sister, Cerys 'Carrie' Jamesina.

This delay seemed to have a lifelong effect on the newborn; he strove for the next seven + decades never to be late for anything ever again. The twin's happy and relieved mother was often heard to say afterwards that neither of her second born children ever dawdled, and in fact were in 'an eternal competition' to reach any and all destinations ahead of their closest sibling.

The twin's father, 'Daniel' Glyndwr West, was at a nearby horse auction-fair, but arrived home within the hour, to meet his second born son. Nessa and Dan West would have a total of seven children.

Their daughters were:

Elspeth Jean, 'Jeanny', named for her maternal grandmother, born in 1836.

Cerys Jamesina 'Carrie' West, named for her paternal grandmother, born in 1842 as noted above.

Meredydd Olwen 'Meri' named for Daniel West's late sister, born in 1846.

And Rhiannon

'Anny' Mhairi, named for Jessa's sister, born in 1850.

Their sons were Andrew 'Drew' Glyndwr West, named for Daniel's father born in 1838,

James Kiernan Templeton West, as noted above, born in 1842,

and Timothy Cameron 'Cam' West born in 1852, named for Jessa's grandfather.

Union Army of the Potomac - May, 1861 - May, 1865, Aide-Consultant to the General of the Armies Ulysses S Grant, 1865-1869, United States Treasury Department, Secret Service Agency 1869-1882-Aide to former President Grant- 1882-1885 ...- 186

James graduated 2cnd Lt, from the USMA in May, 1861, 12th in a class of 45, with a decided aptitude for horsemanship and artillery, placing high in his class in those domains. He entered the USMA at West Point on dual recommendations from the Senators from Pennsylvania and Virginia, at age 16.

Between May of '61 and May of '65, James won promotion to 1st Lt, to Captain and a brevet [temporary] promotion to Major - serving, as it seemed to James at first despite his best skills, in the 51st Pennsylvania Infantry.- He would also serve in the organization that would eventually be titled the Army Bureau of Military Information, and on detached duty with the Army of the Cumberland, in the Chattanooga-Knoxville Campaigns, and on assigned duty to General Ulysses Grant from the Vicksburg Campaign through the end of the War.

Personal Information

chestnut hair, green eyes, freckles, a wiry frame, resembles his mother's side of the family more than his father's, learned to speak Creole French, and to speak and read Spanish and French fluently while attending boarding/prep school in New Orleans from age 11-15.

Personal Interests

military history, horse breeding, French philosophers [Chateaubriand], singing, marksmanship, artillery, legerdemain, boxing, and in later years through his best friends: theatre, especially Shakespeare, symphonic music and ballet, but not opera, 'never opera!' [he was kidding about the opera, just to plague those same friends.]

While the young family lived in Missouri, over the next two years time, most family members called the new arrival 'the baby', or 'Jaimey'. But when they visited his mother's family outside Norfolk, Virginia, a change began to take place, one that would last a lifetime. His namesake uncle, James Kiernan Templeton , called "Jaimey' by everyone who knew him, soon moved home to live no more than an eighth of a mile down the hill from the main Templeton family home. And so, the family matriarch, Jean Alys Kiernan Morrissey Templeton announced her firm decision.

"One Jaimey is often more than enough to have under this old roof. We'll call Nessa's newest little boy Kiery." Jean Kiernan's decisions had all the weight of law, and in some places, moreso. And so 'Kiery' he was, at least amongst his family, throughout Maryland, Central Pennsylvania and Ohio, northern Virginia, the Carolinas, and his father's brother's family, down around San Antonio, for the rest of his life. 'Kiery' grew up traveling very often between family member's homes, as was the custom.

The dominant events of his childhood, and as Jim would say himself, in later years, of his whole life, were the near-death of his mother Nessa Roisin West, in a house fire, when Kiery was only a few days past his seventh birthday, and the deaths of his father Daniel, his twin sister 'Carrie', and his brother Drew , in a yellow fever epidemic that took the lives of one tenth of Norfolk's population in 1853.

'Kiery' was eleven that year, and took a long time working through the grief and regret, especially since he had been at odds with his father on several occasions before the elder West's death.

Jaimey Templeton, the uncle he was named for, without consciously intending to do so over time took on much of the fatherly role Daniel West left; while his wife Betrys already a fast friend with Nessa West, became her greatest support and a second mother to her children.

Kiery, like many boys of his era, attended a number of boarding schools from the age of eight on upwards. But the most powerful influence on his school years wasn't schoolmasters, school mates or his classes. Bright as Kiery was, he was often bored in school and did his most avid reading whenever a new book of historical or legendary heroes came into his hands.

Those old stories, of King Arthur, and Lionheart, of Llewellyn and Henry V, of Charlemagne and Roland and El Cid, of Ulysses, Hercules and Achilles, lit the boy's imagination like wildfire. So did his grandfather's stories from the Revolution. Washington, Lafayette and South Carolina's own Francis Marion were the stuff of both history and wonder to boys of that era, as much or more than any made up champions. They were genuine, fire-tired heroes. And Kiery wanted more than anything to be a bona fide hero!

Another dynamic that formed Kiery and his friends, and everyone around them in those school years, was the increasing, more and more violent divisions of the entire nation over the core issue of slavery, it's existence as an institution, and it's expansion into the new, western Territories. It formed and defined 'the national debate', no matter what was done to compromise or otherwise avoid the issue. And it was already dividing every element of the country, from political parties, to churches, to school-boys on each side of an increasing chasm.

Born in Missouri, raised in northern Virginia, and central Pennsylvania, Kiery/Jim felt this divide as if it lived inside him. Friends and kin he loved were ranged on each side of it. Even places he cherished and memories he wanted to keep forever were colored by the movements for either nation-wide Abolition or Southern secession. At age 16, getting ready to graduate prep school a year early, Kiery, who his schoolmates more often called Jim, began his greatest effort to date, to win an appointment to West Point.

His southern friends and cousins were pushing too, for themselves and Jim to attend the justly renowned Virginia Military Institute. His northern professors and classmates shared the young West's enthusiasm for the US Military Academy. And his grandmother Templeton made it clear she'd much prefer Kiery attend William And Mary College in Williamsburg instead, to 'read the Law' and try for election to the House of Burgesses there. Appealing to his namesake, Kiery was elated with the results. Using his not inconsiderable influence with friends in the Congress from Maryland, Jaimey Templeton acquired a much sought after political sponsor for his nephew. The rest was up to the boy and he plunged into the work of preparing for the grueling admissions tests at West Point with all his youthful determination and spirit. Working on this goal for a solid year, Jim/Kiery won admittance to the USMA class of 1857.

The Academy was already world renowned for the engineering education it gave all it's cadets, the rigorous training in horsemanship, tactics, artillery, languages, and the Classics it provided them, and for the Code of Conduct those cadets swore to follow. What the Regular US Army already knew at this point, and what the country as a whole would soon be learning, was the Auriantine force of the bonds their years at West Point formed for the boys who entered and the men who graduated.

Second Lieutenant James Kiernan Templeton West graduated 12th of 45 in the May, 1861 class at West Point. They'd already lost a number of classmates to the Southern Cause, and more would soon follow. West Pointers in fact were even suspected of disloyalty in general at the War's beginning. Those who remained strong for the Union, like George H. Thomas of Virginia, and James West, and many others, soon proved those suspicions worthless. [ In actual USMA history, Samuel Nicoll Benjamin of NY actually graduated 12th of 45 in the May 1861 class at West Point No disrespect whatever is intended to that officer, who became Chief of Artillery for the Army of the Potomac! And who, in the fighting around Knoxville, with no good placement for his guns, cut short fuses on 20 lb shells, lit them with a cigar or a brand from a nearby fire, and lobbed them by hand at the Rebels! … hmmm… sound familiar?]

The new graduates were soon officially inducted into the Regular Army and by October of '61, James West had distinguished himself sufficiently to earn promotion to First Lieutenant. And it was at this point, when the Union Army was still reeling and still reorganizing after First Bull Run, that Jim West was recruited into what would later become the Bureau of Military Information.

His years growing up in northern Virginia would soon prove an invaluable asset to the young officer in the espionage work he was now taking on. He knew the countryside, ' the Old Dominion drawl', and the people there, 'like the back of my hand'. One more significant event of that first autumn of the War came when Frank Harper introduced Jim West to a fellow soldier and fellow agent, by the name of Artemus Gordon. Whether or not these two hit it off immediately was not recorded in the published letters or journals of either man. What is known is their record for taking on and succeeding brilliantly ' together, separately', at the toughest, thorniest missions the Army could find for them.

When elements of the 9th Corps were detached and sent first to Vicksburg, to Chattanooga and then to Knoxville, Jim West saw even more action in the 'Western theatre' of the War and won a Captain's rank. Then for a brief time he won a brevet/field promotion to Major. Like all brevet promotions this was not a permanent change of status, nor did it come with a raise in pay. But for the rest of the War James West had brass oak leaves on his shoulder boards and was just a little proud of that fact.

Civil War service: James Kiernan Templeton West

**51st Regiment, Pennsylvania Infantry**

**OVERVIEW:**

Organized at Harrisburg November 16, 1861.

Left State for Annapolis, Md., November 16.

Attached to Reno's Brigade, Burnside's North Carolina Expeditionary Corps, to April, 1862.

2nd Brigade, 2nd Division, Dept. of North Carolina., to July, 1862.

2nd Brigade, 2nd Division, 9th Army Corps, Army of the Potomac, to April, 1863;

Army of the Ohio to June, 1863;

Army of the Tennessee to August, 1863,

and Army of the Ohio to April, 1864.

1st Brigade, 3rd Division, 9th Army Corps, Army Potomac, to September, 1864.

1st Brigade, 1st Division, 9th Army Corps, to July, 1865.

**SERVICE:**

Duty at Annapolis till January 9, 1862

. Burnside's Expedition to Hatteras Inlet and Roanoke Island, N. C., January 9-February 8

. Battle of Roanoke Island February 8.

Moved to New Berne March 11-13. Battle of New Berne March 14.

Expedition to Pollocksville March 21-22.

Expedition to Elizabeth City April 17-19.

Camden, South Mills, April 19.

Duty at New Berne till July.

Moved to Newport News, Va., July 6-9,

thence to Fredericksburg August 2-4.

March to relief of Pope August 12-15.

Pope's Campaign in Northern Virginia August 16-September 2.

Battles of Groveton August 29;

Bull Run August 30;

Chantilly September 1;

Maryland Campaign September 6-24.

Battle of South Mountain September 14.

Antietam September 16-17.

Duty at Pleasant Valley till October 27.

Movement to Falmouth, Va., October 27-November 19. Battle of Fredericksburg, Va., December 12-15. Burnside's second Campaign. "Mud March" January 20-24, 1863.

Moved to Newport News February 19,

thence to Covington and Paris, Ky., March 26-April 1. Moved to Mount Sterling April 3, to Lancaster May 6-7 and to Crab Orchard May 23.

Movement to Vicksburg, Miss., June 3-17.

Siege of Vicksburg June 17-July 4.

Advance on Jackson, Miss., July 5-10.

Siege of Jackson July 10-17.

At Milldale till August 6.

Moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, August 6-20.

Duty in Kentucky till October.

Operations in East Tennessee till November 14.

Knoxville Campaign November 4-December 23. Campbell's Station November 16.

Siege of Knoxville November 17-December 4.

Pursuit of Longstreet December 5-29.

Regiment re-enlisted January 1, 1864,

and on Veteran furlough January 11-March 9.

At Annapolis, Md., till April 23.

Rapidan Campaign May 4-June 12.

Battles of the Wilderness May 5-7;

Spottsylvanla May 8-12; Ny River May 9;

Spottsylvania C. H. May 12-21.

Assault on the Salient May 12.

North Anna River May 23-26.

Ox Ford May 24.

Line of the Pamunkey May 26-28.

Totopotomoy May 28-31.

Cold Harbor June 1-12.

Bethesda Church June 1-3.

Before Petersburg June 16-18.

Siege of Petersburg June 16, 1864, to April 2, 1865.

Mine Explosion, Petersburg, July 30, 1864.

Weldon Railroad August 18-21.

Poplar Springs Church,

Peeble's Farm, September 29-October 2.

Reconnoissance on Vaughan and Squirrel Level Road October 8.

Boydton Plank Road, Hatcher's Run, October 27-28.

Fort Stedman March 25, 1865.

Appomattox Campaign March 28-April 9.

Assault on and fall of Petersburg April 2.

Pursuit of Lee to Farmville.

Moved to City Point, thence to Alexandria April 20-28. Grand Review May 23.

Duty at Washington and Alexandria till July. Mustered out July 27, 1865.

Regiment lost during service 12 Officers and 165 Enlisted men killed and mortally wounded and 137 Enlisted men by disease. Total 314.

At War's end, Jim West, as usual, knew what he wanted to continue doing. The assassination of Lincoln made it crystal clear to the men who'd served in the Army's Intelligence service that more than an occasional, uniformed 'escort detail' was needed to safeguard the Commander in Chief. No formal organization for such work existed at that time. None would be legislated into existence for some time afterwards. But the need was acknowledged and agents of the Treasury Department, already deeply involved in fighting counterfeiting since the War, took on double duty, protecting the President and other Cabinet officers. James Kiernan Templeton West was ready to apply for this line of work as soon as he heard of it 'through channels'.

Then something happened that formed the course of the young 'retired' Major's life. A ruthlessly ambitious Federal prosecutor in Norfolk, VA convened a Grand Jury, which in fact issued an indictment against Robert E Lee for treason. The next step would have been to try the former Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia in a Federal Court. President Andrew Johnson was ready and wiling to go along with this scheme, despite the terms of the surrender Lee signed at Appomattox.

When he found about this, Ulysses Grant who gave Lee those surrender terms was utterly livid. This Federal Grand Jury's potential secret indictment would abrogate that document entirely and break Grant's sworn word! Grant was now "General of the Armies" and as such he started protesting and seeking to find out the facts of the matter. He sent for the best pair of former soldier-agents he knew , Artemus Gordon and James West. Their new assignment, which would have to be even more covert than any wartime mission, was to find out who was really pushing for Lee to go on trial, and proof of what would happen to the barely reunited country if he did!

Both young men eagerly took on the General's mission. Jim used every contact he had in Virginia and the Carolinas. Artie used every trick of their mutual espionage trade and then invented some more. As during the War the two men worked exceptionally well together. As before they found out information no one else could. Armed with their findings, and his own huge public approval Grant went to Johnson and sternly informed the President he would be not only losing his 'General of the Armies' if he allowed Lee's trial to go forward, he would be re-igniting the War!

And on top of all that, the two agents confirmed a report Grant already had, Lee was terminally ill. Any such technically legal 'kangaroo court' set up against him would be trying a dying man! Gordon and West were a successful team once again. And both men agreed they much preferred this type of occupation, helping their former Commander do something that also protected the country at large. The United States Secret Service, whose main work was against counterfeiters, was developing a small corps of agents who would, when necessary, take on tougher, more complicated assignments.

James West signed on for those duties with his customary confidence and enthusiasm. And when Ulysses Grant became President, in March of 1869, he changed West's duties exponentially, based on the younger man's record and proven loyalty. And to Jim's pleased surprise, the President teamed him once more with Artemus Gordon. That team proved themselves more than worthy of the President's own adamantine loyalty. For fifteen years afterwards, they stopped one plot, enemy and conspiracy after another that would have otherwise damaged, divided or destroyed the nation they gladly served with Honor.

It was in the fall and winter of 1875-76, that as only very recently rediscovered journals, correspondence and communiqués show, James West, who by that time had a considerable reputation as a ladies man, finally fell hopelessly in love. And as Jim later noted himself, 'hopelessly was always the operative word' for his encounter with Her Serene Highness, Zara Timandra Alys Iliana, the Dowager-Princess-Royal-Grand Electress of Wallachia. The young, recently widowed monarch came to Washington seeking help in her search for justice, following her husband's assassination.

Vittorio Antony Constantin Alexander, Prince-Royal-Consort of Wallachia, Count of Montebello, Duke of Vorrterra, had been abducted and murdered over a year past, while on a hunting trip in the Medicine Bow range of the eastern Rockies in Wyoming Territory. His murderers planned to put an impostor on the ancient throne of the tiny eastern European principality. But, as with so many other cases Artie and Jim were called to solve, these killers didn't get what they wanted, not even close. With a classic combination of Artie's disguises and daring, and Jim's sheer stamina and tenacious endurance, and vice versa, in this case, the Prince-Consort's murderers were caught, imprisoned and indicted. Those US citizens involved were soon tried and convicted; And that part of the case was thankfully, over.

But the Wallachian conspirators who'd been at the head of the plot, spent months claiming 'diplomatic immunity' from any and all charges against them. The State Department was in one of its usual quandaries on this point. The abduction and murder of Prince 'Vito' clearly took place within US jurisdiction. But the conspiracy, which the Wallachian prisoners vehemently denied, had its roots in Wallachia's Byzantine political plight. The wrangling over these questions went on for year without resolution. At that point, over the protests of her Prime Minister and Wallachia's Consul General, Her Serene Highness Zara Timandra arrived in Washington, with her nine year old son and Heir, Crown Prince Alexander Constantin Antony Vittorio. Rumors ran all through the capital that she had one and only one purpose in making this journey. The Princess-Royal Grand Electress of Wallachia was said to be sternly determined that her traitorous countrymen should be extradited back to their mutual homeland for their treason trial.

It was under these conditions that James West first met the Grand Electress. Before they exchanged one word, before they laid eyes on one another, they were at odds. And all the protocols he'd ever learned, all the deference for women he'd been raised with were going to go right out the window, Jim told his partners, the Director and on one especially fraught occasion, the President, in the face of this foreign royal's 'danged interference'!

Artemus, Jeremy and Frank were much amused by the way Jim fumed, when he was assigned to oversee the Grand Electress' security . Colonel Richmond was less pleased, at least in public. And President Grant simply waited for his protégé and friend to calm down before wordlessly reminding Jim of his various oaths. So, on the evening of October 16th, 1875, James West put on his best 'bib and tucker' and reluctantly left the Wanderer for the Wallachian Consulate's Royal Soiree. I was in trouble as soon as I got there. Jim himself wrote some time later. No one, including any of my partners, bothered to tell me this event, welcoming the Grand Electress was a costume-ball, because she really loved them! So, what happened to me, first off, was something very like what happened to some of General Lee's General Staff at Appomattox Courthouse, when then General Grant arrived at the McLean House.

He'd been riding all morning, and was not wearing anything resembling a dress uniform, only his 'shoulder boards that showed his Lt. General's stars. In fact he rarely wore much insignia to show his rank and that day was no exception. So some of Lee's staff thought this was some road-weary, dust covered staff clerk, staff sergeant or lowly captain, at best, instead of what he was, Commanding General, Union Armies! Needless to say, the Union General Staff set them straight on the double-quick! So, when I got to the Wallachian Consulate, the first person I saw was a slight-built , fragile looking, willowy young woman, wearing an old fashioned, powdered wig, and an antique style 18th century man's outfit, complete with leggings and a long satin brocade jacket, that made her look like a palace servant right out of 'Cinderella'. And thinking that, when she held out her hand, I handed her my evening cloak and my hat! And, in my own defense, I have to point out- she took them!

Her Serene Highness, one of the Grand Electress' ladies in waiting later explained, wished to get a look at one of the American agents who captured her husband's killers. She'd made herself well aware of the issues surrounding the conspirator's possible extradition. She expressed her clear understanding of the American position on the matter. Now she wanted the chance to anonymously assess one of the brash Americans who so opposed the idea that her nefarious countrymen should be tried at home. What the Grand Electress' first impression was of James West, was only much later found in her papers. According to Artemus Gordon's journal from that period, however, from the instant Jim West was introduced to Her Serene Highness, Jim himself wrote,

'I was a goner'. Her face was entirely perfect, a pale oval lit by big, dark nearly almond shaped eyes. Her hair under that wig, was a mass of dark, glowing ringlets, gathered high against her swan-pure neck. Her features were as classsically beautiful as the 'Diana of Versailles' by Leochares, one of the most renowned Greek sculptors. And I can't be a gentleman and say much about her form. Only that she was lovely, in every way. And yes, I fell in love with the Grand Electress. No, I fell in love with a sad, lonely, warm hearted gorgeous woman who just happened to be born royal. An accident of birth, that's what she called it, the fact that I was born in an old house near Silver Springs, Maryland and she was born in a palace outside Warsaw.

But Jim West was not only a 'commoner' when compared in European style rank to the Grand Electress of Wallachia, he was a representative of the US government, and specifically the Grant Administration. So a gulf easily as wide as the Grand Canyon lay between the agent and Her Serene Highness before they ever met. And that was a gulf they never bridged, not in public. Publicly they became good friends and used that friendship to strengthen the bonds already growing between her tiny, ancient Principality, and his growing, thriving far younger Nation.

Jim's admiration for the Grand Electress grew by leaps and bounds the longer he knew her. 'She was as strong as she looked to be fragile." the agent wrote. 'And she was as graceful and easy to know as she at first seemed hidebound and formal. I daresay I seemed like a martinet at first myself. I didn't wish to be that. But abruptly I felt lke a stammering schoolboy, like Christien de Neuvillette, meeting Roxanne for the first time, and going speechless! And my own best choice for Cyrano, which would surely have been Artie, was all the way across the city at another function! Fortunately, my own training and her genuine courtesy and compassion got me past that. Luckily we both got past our superficial differences and discovered we had a fair amount in common.

'Timi', as her friends called her in private loved her parties and her costumes. But what she loved most about them was the way she could 'spy' on her courtiers, and find more of what they were truly thinking, more about what really worried them. She liked to ride and tramp and hike as much, maybe more than I do. She loved digging for clams out on the Chesapeake islands more than most of the natives there did. And Timi even loved to 'swim the ponies' from Assauteague to Chincoteague island for the yearly charity auction. She'd longed to be a tomboy when she was growing up, in fact. But that had been impossible with all her tutors, governesses and relatives always around. One of the biggest, happiest smiles I ever saw on Timi's face came when she and her son Alec first tasted potatoes that had been buried and roasted in a campfire on the beaches.

But the only thing Timi loved as much as her son was her country. And how could I ever say I didn't understand that? When her year in the States was up, she had to go back to Wallachia and be it's ruler-regent for Alec, for her husband's memory. She was born to do that. No question. No alternative. None looked for, really. She let me spend a fortnight with her just before they sailed. And one part of me was more than ready to take ship with her. Timi wouldn't let me do that. And of course she was right. I learned that she was a very wise young woman, in fact, and very often, she was right.

And she granted the only favor I ever asked of the Grand Electress. She took my mother's green Wedgewood cameo brooch back with her, promising to send it to me, if ever she had need of a stubborn, impetutous, hot tempered, 'Yankee-Americain'. I promised I'd come in that case if I had to swim the Atlantic and climb the Alps to get there. Timi laughed, her silvery music laugh and shook her head. 'Wouldn't that make you awfully tired out by the time you got there, mon cher?' 'Try me." I answered. And that was the end of that talk. She and Alec went home the next morning.

Her Serene Highness, Zara Timandra Alys Iliana, the Dowager-Princess-Royal-Grand Electress of Wallachia returned to her homeland and ruled wisely and well there, She handed over rule of a thriving, free and happy principality to her son on the eve of his eighteenth birthday, seven years after her visit to the Americas. She oversaw the building and operation of hundreds of schools, including some more on the American model. She corresponded vigorously and in the strongest possible terms with heads of state she either agreed or disagreed with.

She acted as Alec's hostess for nearly four years, until he married. And then, in the style of many monarchs and heads of state, not to mention the weatthy classes of that period, the Dowager-Princess Royal made a Grand Tour of Africa, the Meditterreanean, India and Asia. On the last leg of that journey, going through the markets and temples, the palaces and the squalor of south east Asia, rumor had it the Dowager Princess Royal had only two constant companions: the leukemia that was draining her strength even at such a young age, and a handsome 'foreign gentleman' with bright eyes, greying dark chestnut hair and a daybright grin, who rarely if ever left her side. Her Serene Highness passed away in her sleep, from complications of her chronic leukemia, in Bangkok, on August 25th, 1882. She was 47.

Her escort, Jim West returned home to Virginia and for a time seriously considered going into actual retirement, or at least devoting himself to the family horse breeding concerns and letting 'the world take care of the world's problems'. But one man, and one set of problems worked together to keep Jim from becoming a 'grumpy young recluse' as that man, Artemus Gordon put it. Artie was not about to let his best friend take a broken heart and nurse it along with every new foal in his grandfather's stable. He knew Jim too well to allow that kind of waste or self indulgence to go on very long. And finally Jim agreed. He'd been allowing self interest to make his decisions. That came to an abrupt end with Artie's help now.

And by this time, Jim was also increasingly involved in working with and for Union and Confederate veterans. That work: writing, touring and speaking for veterans services, hospitals and rights, would take his whole strength, his whole focus and all his efforts for the next thirty two years. He called them all, north and south alike his 'brothers in arms'. And nothing gave him more satisfaction than seeking and gaining the respect, the care and the honor they'd truly earned.

Throughout the summer of 1885, Jim West was at Saratoga Springs, NY with his mentor and model, Ulysses Grant, during the great man's last battle, one he would not win, with throat cancer. Deeply moved by this fresh evidence of the President's tremendous courage, West would later write that he 'only hoped for the same valor under extreme circumstances'. When veterans from the Army of the Potomac marched at Grant's funeral parade alongside veterans of the renowned 'Stonewall Brigade' James West found it the most moving expression of respect for the lost hero he could imagine.

During this period Jim West also began taking on ' just a handful' of teaching assignments at West Point, and occasionally at the Service' Academy, too. It pleased the 1861 West Point graduate no end to help the plebes and older cadets tackle his own favorite subjects: Tactics, Armaments, Equestrian Training, The Rules of Engagement and Military History. And when he could find other graduates to help the boys struggling as he once had with Statistics, Natural Science, Calculus and Latin, it seemed to please Jim even more. Most of all he watched with tremendous joy and pride as the same bonds grew between these youngsters as he'd formed in the same environment, decades ago.

Then in the winter of 1886-87, a very different challenge came to the former West Pointer, soldier and agent. Through a tragedy not unlike the one in his early years, Jim gained an entirely new and unexpected role. A hurricane swept up the south eastern coast that season with murderous force. A number of small towns, fishing villages and resorts were completely destroyed, with great loss of life. One of those towns happened to be Wilmington, on the North-South Carolina border. And it was in Wilmington that Jim's cousins Dan and Ginny Morrissey had their summer home. They would normally never be there in the winter months. But this year a family reunion was in the works, to be held at their summer home. And it was in need of considerable repairs. They were lost, along with two of their five young children, Daniel Pedersen, Jr, and Jean Alys, and a great many more family members.

Grieving and shocked, Jim made a swiftly compassionate decision, and acted on it as quickly as he could. He adopted the three remaining children, Jennifer Elisabeth, Jemison Auri, and Jessamyn Lynne to make sure they would always be safe and protected, in every way that he possibly ensure. For the rest of his life, Jim West would say this was the saddest, hardest decision he'd ever had to make, and the one he was most proud of. And most of his friends and kin readily agreed he done something that showed his great compassion and his open heart in doing it. 'Ginny-Beth, 'Jemmy' and "Nessa-Lynne' all were fond of their 'Cousin Kiery' before the tragedy. Afterwards they all said he was the one who helped them begin to heal from their shocking losses, in part by relating his own boyhood struggles with loss and grief.

Then, in 1901,came the 'greatest shock of my life' as Artie called it in his journals. As fate would have it, the Service' Director was at the Academy in Denver when that devastating fire took place. Artie had, very reluctantly, and with every intent of keeping it on a temporary basis, taken on the post of Assistant Director. Now he was heading the agency, very much against his own wishes, and very much in accordance with the wishes of the new President, Theodore Roosevelt.

These two very dynamic, determined men 'locked horns' on this issue and quite a few others, and as protocol demanded, the President won, on almost every such occasion. The Service was in need of a 'good shaking up' and a dam good stirring about, as well', Roosevelt concluded, following the assassinations of James Garfield and William McKinley. Artemus, 'Teddy' concluded had always been good at both. Artie kept up his protests, stating his former partner and friend Jim West would be far better suited to the task at hand.

But on this question, as on so many others, the youngest President would not be moved. Nor did Jim want the job, he insisted, grinning widely at his very much flummoxed friend. So, Artie was now Director, and as such he gleefully turned the tables on Jim. Within weeks of Artie's taking over as Service Director, President Roosevelt appointed James West to head the new Service Academy complex in Fairfax, VA.

Throughout the first two decades of the new century, these old partners worked closely once more. And for all their public shows of chagrin or resentment, they loved it. And despite his new, 'unasked for, unwanted work load', Artie took on still more, as did his former partner. Artemus donated to, sponsored, toured in and funded theatrical companies from Boston to New Orleans and from Washington to Chicago and more. James funded, sponsored, donated to, and toured for new veterans hospitals wherever they were most needed.

There was one other exceptionally memorable event in his life, at this period, as Jim West recorded in his journal on July, 1913, at Gettysburg, PA. On the same farmlands they'd fought over fifty years before, veterans from south and north held an emotional reunion. Standing once more on either side of the stonewall where Pickett's famous Charge ended, these white haired, weathered old men stood and embraced each other as brothers. No one who saw that sight would ever forget it, or them, Jim West heard someone saying, and then realized he was the speaker.

At his grandmother's rambling, often repaired and rebuilt home on a hill outside Norfolk, on August 14th, 1917, while working on a new lecture series about the war in Europe, James West died peacefully, surrounded by long time friends and many, many cousins. A long since diagnosed heart murmur, caused by mitral stenosis had finally made good on its hidden threat to his health,. He was survived by his closest friend, Artemus Gordon and Artie's son Eli, his own sister Jeanny, her family, and his adopted children, Jemison Auri Morrissey West, Sarah Elisabeth Morrissey West Madsen, and Jessamyn Lynne Morrissey West Alexander, along with their children and spouses. He was laid to rest with full military honors not far from the mansion that had once been the home of another Virginian, Robert E. Lee. James Kiernan Kiernan West was 77.


End file.
